Seventh Time's the Charm
by ThereBeDragons17
Summary: Up until the seventh year, James's attempt to woo Lily are... let's say... unsuccessful. A story about how James has tried to ask Lily out on a date through their years at Hogwarts, why she always turned him down and what led her to finally say yes.
**A/N: I know squat about Ancient Runes. I actually read Rick Riordan's** ** _The Sword of Summer_** **and they mentioned** ** _ehwaz_** **, and I remembered Hermione saying that she "mixed up** ** _ehwaz_** **with** ** _eihwaz"_** **, and I was like, runes! And that's all I know about them. So if there is someone who knows something about runes… if I got something right… that would be very impressive on my part.**

* * *

First Year

"Hey, Evans, d'you wanna go to the Christmas dinner with me?"

Lily blinks at him. "We're in the same house. Aren't we all going to have dinner together? Like every night?"

James shrugs. "No, I mean _with me_ with me."

Oh.

 _Oh._

Lily's eleven and three-eighths. Dating is a disgusting concept. Boys are a really disgusting concept. James Potter is, by extension, a _really, really_ disgusting concept, and the idea of going on a _date_ with him is… just… no. She's a little touched that he asked, but he's annoying, and for the three-odd months she's known him he hasn't been particularly nice to her. Still, he was courageous enough to ask. She can at least be polite in response.

"No!"

She didn't quite mean to sound so… _shrill._

James blinks at her with stupefaction. "What—no?"

"No."

"Really? No?"

"No! No, James, no! I will not go to the Christmas dinner with you."

"But Sirius has a date!"

"Well, hooray for him. Is that the only reason why you asked me, then? To one-up your mate?"

"I—Evans!—of course not! I like you, and I would have asked you anyways but I didn't think that we _could_ bring dates—I just—"

In her three-odd months with him, Lily's never seen the great James Potter look anything less than suave and confident, but now he's blundering like a moose on ice.

"Thanks for asking," she says coolly, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder and getting ready to retreat to the Girls' Dormitory, "But no thanks."

* * *

Second Year

Lily's looking for James. He's gone too far this time, and she's going to make him pay for it. He's in the Gryffindor Common Room, surrounded by his usual cohort, which Lily thinks is an odd bunch. Sirius Black and James are like twins separated at birth, but Remus Lupin seems like he actually possesses more than a few brain cells as well as a streak of dignity, and she spends more time pitying Peter Pettigrew than actually trying to work out how he fell in with the other three. It's late and they're pouring over a huge piece of parchment that's covered with lines and dots and has many smaller pieces of parchment attached to the sides. Sirius is tapping to with his wand while James and Remus laugh from above. It looks like a map, and normally Lily would be curious, but at this precise moment she is too enraged for there to be room for anything else within her slim frame.

"JAMES POTTER!"

All four of them turn to stare at her. They're all taller and probably stronger than her (except Peter and maybe Remus, who's looking rather ill), and they outnumber her four to one, but they all cower before her.

"Hi, Evans," James manages, trying to sound smooth and failing due to the steady upward trend of his voice.

Lily marches toward him and sticks her wand point under his chin. "DID YOU THINK THAT WAS FUNNY?"

James shakes his head vigorously, then pauses. "Maybe?"

"WHAT YOU DID TO SEVERUS?"

"Oh… that. Yeah, that was definitely funny."

"HE'S BEEN SERIOUSLY INJURED, YOU PRAT," Lily screams at him. She notices Sirius and Remus backing away slowly out of the corner of her eye and thrusts her wand at them threateningly. They freeze as if she put an Immobility Charm on them. "I KNOW YOU HELPED HIM!"

Remus coughs. "I assure you, I did not. Sirius did."

"Thanks a bunch, _Moony_ ," Sirius mutters as Lily fumes at him.

"NOW HE'S STUCK IN THE HOSPITAL WING, AND MADAM POMFREY WON'T LET ME SEE HIM, BECAUSE YOU BLEW UP HIS CAULDRON IN HIS FACE! IF HE DIES-"

"Whoa, Evans!" James says, looking alarmed. "We'd never _kill_ someone! Humiliation, degradation, maybe—only for people who need to be taken down a peg, of course—" he adds quickly as Lily glares at him, "—but we'd never _kill_ a person!"

"Even Snivellus," Sirius chimes in, looking the most sincere Lily has even seen (although, as he is faced with an angry Lily Evans at close range, it may simply be his animalistic instincts to survive kicking in).

"Lily, think about it, I'd never let these two do something bad enough to land someone in Saint Mungo's or anything," Remus reasons seriously.

Lily slowly and hesitantly (and maybe even disappointedly) lowers her wand. Everyone in the room visibly relaxes.

"Look, Evans, I'm sorry it went that far. Honest, I am!" James protests as Lily sends him a highly doubtful look. "But since all that's blown over… almost… maybe… can I make it up to you? Do you want to go out and do something? Or—"

Lily turns around and leaves them there with their weird parchment and apprehensive expressions.

* * *

Third Year

James corners her in the library between lunch and Transfiguration.

"Hey, Evans, it's a Hogsmeade weekend the week after next. Do you want to, maybe, go to a restaurant with me?"

"Definitely not."

"What? Why?"

Bless him, he actually looks confused. And perhaps slightly adorable. "Because the weekend after next is _Valentine's Day_."

"…That's kind of why I asked you. It seems like an appropriate time." He studies her exasperated expression. "Should I have gotten chocolates? Padfoot said I should always get chocolates, but it was already Valentine's Day, I didn't want to get too cliché…"

"James, everyone always appreciates chocolate, but if we go out on Valentine's Day that would make it seem like we were a couple."

"Again, that's kind of why I asked you."

Lily gives him a knowing look as she slides the massive pile of books she's using back to Madam Pince, who inspects each one to make sure that Lily hasn't defiled them in some way before dubiously placing them on her cart. "James, we are not and will never be a couple."

"One Hogsmeade weekend, Evans, just one. Maybe it'll be snowed out, and then you won't even have to go! Just say yes—"

"So you're in it for the bragging rights?"

"No!"

"You're despicable, James Potter."

"I am not."

"Yes, you are."

"Silence in the library, please!" Madam Pince hisses at them.

James pauses, then asks in a much quieter voice, "Why won't you go out with me?"

Lily stops dead and looks at the ground for a moment. She can feel the smugness radiating off of James Potter. He thinks that he has her trapped, and that any minute he'll win this battle of his. So she plans her response, looks him right in those hazel eyes and says,

"You're head is too big to fit in a room without suffocating the people inside. You think you're so great because you got onto the Quidditch team in second year and you won't stop boasting to anyone about just how good you are. You think that you're some kind of elite. You strut around the castle like you own it. You all but torture other students, some of whom are my friends, I'll have you know, and you have a remarkable ability to _not take a hint_. So, James Potter, _that's_ why I will not go out with you."

She walks around him and leaves him standing shell-shocked in the middle of the aisle.

* * *

Fourth Year

Lily is getting very tired of listening to Professor Felix ramble on and on about how everyone is going to die within the next week. It didn't happen last week. Or the week before. Or the week before that, if you can imagine! She's long since given up on the notion that Divination is a science or even an art. The Professor's going particularly slowly and pedantically today because he's briefing next year's professor, a woman with large glasses and a beaded shawl named Sibyl Trelawney.

"And you, my sweet dear, let me see your hand," Professor Felix bursts out suddenly, moving around two small tea tables with a dramatic twirl. Delilah, Lily's longest friend and comrade in this hardship, jerks awake as the Professor seizes her right hand. The class giggles softly at Delilah's bewildered expression as she wakes to find her creepy teacher staring intently at her palm lines. Lily bites her knuckle to keep from outright laughing in Professor Felix's face.

"Hmm," Professor Felix muses. "Nothing noteworthy, nothing noteworthy… I think that you will have a hard time with particular exams this Spring, my dear, I see a dull hardship for you then. Do you perhaps know which one?"

"Divination!" Sirius Black calls from the back of the class, and everyone laughs again.

Professor Felix purses his lips. "If you could restrain yourself, Mr. Black, I would appreciate it greatly. You, darling, let me see your hand."

Lily hesitantly offers her palm and Professor Felix takes it gently. His hands are soft and smooth and brush over her palm lines with a feather-light touch. At least he isn't totally repugnant, Lily thinks.

"Oh, my dear," Professor Felix sighs, clasping her hand in his and sighing again, as if Lily is on her deathbed and he is an onlooker.

Sirius pipes up again, in mock horror, "What, does she actually marry James?"

James kicks him under the table, going slightly red, but the subtlety of the gesture is lost as his knee hits the underside of the tabletop and all of the tea set pieces jump a few inches.

"Detention, Mr. Black," Professor Felix snaps, and then goes back to his theatrical performance. "My dear Miss Evans, I see in your palm that once you are the happiest you have ever been, only a few short years from now, your life will end, but you will leave behind a great legacy. It is a terrible thing, that life gives such joy only to snuff it out—but the workings of the universe are not for us to understand, I suppose." Professor Felix pulls away and looks at her pityingly.

This is the fifth time since they've been introduced that the Professor has predicted Lily's untimely death, so she doesn't think much of it—other than that it will ruin the rest of her day.

"Evans," James Potter calls from the back of the classroom, leaning across his tea table, where Sirius is still rubbing his shin, "Since time is short, will you go out with me now?"

Lily ignores him.

"Just to dinner? Lunch? Brunch, maybe? We could head to the Three Broomsticks once the next Hogsmeade weekend comes up. Or just… look at the shops, or something."

Lily continues to ignore him.

"Mr. Potter, interrupt my class again and you will find yourself with Mr. Black in detention," Professor Felix warns, gliding up the aisle to stand next to him. "Your palm, please."

James deflates slightly and holds out his hand, and when Professor Felix says the same thing for James that he did for Lily, Lily is certain that he's making it up.

* * *

Fifth Year 

James has asked Lily out _at_ _least_ once every day this week, and she's sick of it. It doesn't matter that he's handsomer now than he's ever been (his face has developed more angles and some of the plumpness that accompanies childhood has disappeared). She still despises him. She's almost at the end of her tether and she doesn't want to know what will happen if she flies off it.

James, apparently, hasn't considered this, because he's still following her around and asking her to date him. She's slightly hopeful that after this morning's episode—her screaming at him in the middle of the Great Hall—he will give up.

No such luck.

Just after lunch: "Hey, Evans, Sirius just told me that—"

"If you're about to ask me out, James Potter, I will hex you to kingdom come."

"Now, Evans, violence is never the answer. I just wanted to say—"

"James, at the very least, I will curse you." There's a crowd of people gathering around them now. James Potter's fantastic flame-outs in asking Lily Evans out have become Hogwarts legend, and most of the onlookers are waiting for the promised piece of gossip and/or entertainment that will result from this encounter.

"Come on, Evans, give a man a chance." James runs a hand through his hair and smiles at her. She fumes.

"Do not ask me out again. Walk away."

"I think she's serious, mate," Remus Lupin calls from the inner fringes of the (now sizable) crowd.

"No, I'm Sirius," Sirius says.

"Evans, would you _please,_ and I mean this sincerely and lovingly, go out—"

There's a _bang!_ and a flash of blue light, and James's hair has been turned a bright, Easter-egg blue, and is growing far faster than any hair should. Within seconds it obscures his eyes. Remus grabs his friend by the shoulder, aims a kick at Sirius (who's laughing his head off), and tries to drag him off to the Hospital Wing, but James resists him.

"She hexed me, Professor!" he yells at someone behind Lily. "She hexed me!"

"Quite right," says Professor McGonagall's voice. The stern witch is just behind Lily, and fixes her with a calculating glare. Lily feels her heart fall. McGonagall is about to assign her detention her until the end of the school year. "It was one of the finest hexes I've ever seen. Ten points to Gryffindor." She smiles thinly at Lily as Remus succeeds in dragging away a shocked James, and Lily thinks that maybe, just maybe, the Professor understands.

* * *

Sixth Year

There's a thud, and Lily looks up to see James pulling books out of his bag and claiming the seat across from her. "Evans, please help me."

This is such a change from their usual routine that Lily has to take a second to gather her thoughts. The brilliant James Potter needs _help?_ Ah, he must be up to something.

"With what?" She asks cautiously.

"Ancient Runes," he pleads, giving her a pouting look with his deep hazel eyes. "I missed the lesson about Orientation and Representation and Sirius dropped it last year, so help!"

Lily evaluates his meaningfulness for a moment, and when she decides that he really is desperate, she shifts aside her essay on the ethics of love potions and pulls out her notes from Ancient Runes. She's halfway through explaining why _perthro_ has a strictly correct orientation when she notices that James is staring intently at her hair. "What?"

"Nothing," he quickly covers himself, looking back at Lily's notes. "I like your hair, 's all."

"You like my hair," Lily repeats.

"…Yeah."

"You like my _hair?_ "

"What? That was a compliment! I swear!"

"You look at me and you notice my hair," Lily clarifies.

James shrugs. "Well, not just your hair. I like your eyes a lot, too. You know, I've met people with green eyes, but yours are _really_ green. Like someone hexed them or something."

"Thanks, James."

"You're very welcome." He stares back at the parchment. "What's that one?"

"You know that one."

"No I don't. That's why I asked."

"That was just last class! Professor Vector went on and on about 'the empty cup' and it's significance for warriors in battle…" Lily paused as James scratched the back of his head, looking guilty. "You weren't there then, either?"

"Nope."

"How many classes did you miss?"

"Just the two! And one other… but it'll be good, I promise, you'll love it." He refused to elaborate on what 'it' was.

"Will it cause immediate harm to my person?"

"No, Lily. Never."

"What about other persons?"

"That's highly hypothetical."

"You're being hypothetical. Hypothetically I'll like it."

"… I don't think that works, but I'll roll with it."

"You haven't answered my question."

"Well, _hypothetically,_ where are said persons standing?"

Lily groans and buries her face in her hands.

James winces, although Lily doesn't see it. "You know what, forget it. You were talking about _perthro?"_

It's two hours, many jokes and equally many tangents later that Madam Pince approaches them and tells them that the library will be closing, and unless Lily's checking out those books she had better start returning them to their shelves. James, surprisingly, elects to help her.

"That was nice," he says suddenly, scanning the back of a book to find the author's last name.

Lily reflects on the last few hours and is surprised to find that she agrees. "Yeah, I guess it was."

"I'm going to need help more often if you're always so generous," James says, and part of it sounds—at least to Lily's ears—earnest.

Lily shakes her head and scolds, "No you will not, because _I_ have homework to do, too, and you're too hopeless for me to have time to tutor you _and_ do all my assignments."

"I'm not _that_ bad."

"Mmm, yes, you are."

"I'm not!" James says, but it comes out sounding so whiny that his protest sends them both into fits of giggles. When they've both emerged from their laughing spell, Lily notices that they're much closer than they were before.

"It really was nice," James says. "Just to talk and…laugh, and… not yell at each other."

"It was."

"Go out with me."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because, James, tomorrow you're going to go back to being narcissistic, intolerable prat who likes humiliating others. Two hours doesn't mean anything."

* * *

Seventh Year

It's almost winter, but the day is warm enough that Lily can study outside. She's writing a letter to her sister, who hasn't answered the last two, but she's hopeful that the third time's the charm. It's depressing, she thinks, that Petunia won't even speak with her anymore. Lily never did anything to her, not once, but Severus had been mean to Petunia and ever since the older girl had wanted nothing to do with anything related to magic. Including her very own sister.

There is the crunch of feet on dry leaves and someone sits next to Lily with a warm _whoosh._ "Hey, Evans."

"Hello, James," Lily says, grateful that James didn't try to put her arm around her. When he doesn't say anything she looks up. "Where're the other Marauders?"

James shrugs, looking her in the eyes and then casting his gaze around the courtyard, which is steadily growing more and more barren as the days drag on. "Oh, Wormtail's in Potions, and Moony and Padfoot are playing Exploding Snap."

"I thought you liked Exploding Snap," Lily states. "Pyrotechnics and all."

"Oh, I do," James says, grinning maniacally. Then it slides off his face like molasses. "But you looked upset."

"I'm not upset."

"Sad, then," James amends, and suddenly it's Lily who can't look at him.

Staring at the cobblestones between her feet, Lily mutters, "It's my sister. Petunia. She doesn't like magic much. And… we used to get along really well before I got my letter, but ever since she's been… _distant,_ and now… now she won't answer any of my letters…"

James does put his arm around her then, but there's nothing condescending about this gesture. It doesn't feel like he's trying to claim her in some way. It just feels like he's there for her. "That sounds awful. I mean, it probably is awful, but I don't have siblings, so I guess I wouldn't know."

Lily makes a noncommittal noise and scratches out part of her letter. She leans into the half-hug after a few seconds.

"Thank you."

"What'd I do?"

"For being here, 's all." Lily fiddles with the hem of James's robes. "Why're you so considerate all of the sudden?"

"All of the sudden?"

"This year."

Lily can feel James shrug. "A girl I know said that my head was too big to fit in a room with other people. I thought I maybe should get that checked out, and a good friend of mine—a werewolf, in fact, if you can imagine that—told me that maybe I could be a little nicer to certain people."

"Wow. Seems easy."

"It was very hard, let me tell you," James sighs dramatically. "The treatment involved not blowing up certain things in certain people's faces, _or_ lighting up, say, fireworks, _or_ bewitching things… my whole way of life changed."

Lily can feel James shaking his head in what she can only assume to be a melodramatic way and she laughs. Then they're still for a while.

James shifts under her. "Hey, uh… Lily? Can I ask you something?"

"Shoot," Lily replies immediately, still unable to see his face.

"Just… just think about it, okay? I've been a jerk, I know, for a long time, to a lot of people. But… I really like you, honestly. I really do. So… if you don't absolutely hate me for all of the stuff I've done… Will you go out with me?"

Lily doesn't have to contemplate for long, but she waits for Sirius and Remus stroll leisurely out of the castle before answering, just to make James anxious. "Yes."

She feels him stiffen in surprise. "Yes?"

"Yes."

"Yes!"

" _Yes,_ James, yes. I will go out with you."

"YES!" James yells, and jumps up, dislodging Lily and surprising everyone in the courtyard. "SHE SAID YES! SHE SAID YES!" He takes off at a run, sprinting around the edges of the courtyard with his arms in the air, looking like a complete lunatic and all the while yelling, "SHE SAID YES! SHE SAID YES!"

"Christ, mate," Sirius asks, startled, "Are you dating her or marrying her?"

But James is oblivious to his friend's criticisms, and when he does finally return to Lily on the bench, his smile is a mile wide.


End file.
